Free From Sony Deal, Journey Creator Seeks Pixar-Sized Audience

Image: thatgamecompany

Thatgamecompany, developer of the arthouse PlayStation 3 games Journey and Flower, has big aspirations.

After the indie game developer was founded in 2005, it quickly signed a three-game deal with Sony to make games exclusively for its PlayStation 3. The last one, Journey, became the fastest-selling downloadable PS3 game in the platform’s history. Announcing on Thursday that it had secured $5.5 million in funding from Benchmark Capital to fund future game development, thatgamecompany will finally be able to take its games to multiple platforms, a move that co-founder and creative director Jenova Chen hopes will massively expand the reach of his game designs.

“By raising the money ourselves, we have the control to do what we want,” said Chen to Wired via phone.

Chen says he wants thatgamecompany’s next game, which is already in development, to reach “a mass audience, like a Pixar movie.”

Although Chen praised Sony’s support in a statement released today, he told Wired that being fully independent meant fewer creative restraints. The move to independent publishing will allow thatgamecompany to control minute details about how players interact with their games, Chen says, including how they download and launch the games.

Benchmark Capital was drawn to thatgamecompany’s work because of its “emotional depth, engagement with fully-realized worlds, and a strong sense of authorship,” said the firm’s general partner Mitch Lasky, who will now sit on the board of directors of thatgamecompany, in a statement.

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